Madelyn Cline Says Public Breakup With Chase Stokes Was “Really Hard”
The exes’ Outer Banks characters are still together.
Madelyn Cline and Chase Stokes are the blueprint for staying cordial with an ex. After their breakup in 2021, the duo has continued to work together on Netflix’s Outer Banks, where their characters are still very much in love. (Cline also has a friendly relationship with Kelsea Ballerini, Stokes’ current girlfriend.) But that does not mean working with so closely with an ex is necessarily easy. During a March 20 episode of Therapuss with Jake Shane, Cline opened up about her “really hard” public breakup with Stokes.
According to her, having a relationship in the public eye was a challenge — particularly when the romance ended. “I think at the time I didn’t realize what the repercussions of inviting so many people into — let’s be honest — something that’s intimate,” Cline told Shane on the podcast. “I didn’t understand it. I was so in love.”
“I think they loved it because of us, but they also loved John B and Sarah first and foremost,” she continued. “You look at any public breakup and you know, so many people are invested and of course, that was really hard.”
Nearly four years after the breakup, Cline and Stokes continue to act opposite each other. “We — still to this day — share a very, very big, huge thing that is a massive part of both our lives.”
“It was really, really hard to separate. But, also like any breakup, you grow out of it, which is great,” she continued. “But there was a period of time there where I truly did not know which way was up, which way was down because Outer Banks and that public relationship was kind of my identity. And I was like, ‘Who the f*ck am I?’”
According to her, she’s “still figuring that out” what her identity is outside of Outer Banks. “I have such respect for anyone in the public space who has found and created their identity and is so comfortably seated in that. I know it might seem that they are, and it may not be,” she continued. “But I have so much respect for anyone, anyone that is in any way, shape or form, in the public space.”
